Elser Family Blog

Dad… and a Chicken.

Finally.. A picture I’m not embarrassed about. I am not “photogenic guy” by any stretch. So when one comes along that looks OK, I use it.

So here I am.

With a Chicken.

Rockwell’s Chicken, to be specific. She is the boss of the coop, also the most friendly.

Observed

So; Hannah and I went to dinner the other night with a friend / business associate of mine. This Gentleman is a genuinely good guy. A knowledgeable Engineer. He also happens to be a creationist. Somehow genetics got brought up, and he was talking about how it fits in with creationist theories. Now this guys is no pushover here… He actually helped create the creationist museum in Kentucky. I tried my best to be polite. He had some good points, even though some of the reasoning he was using had holes in it you could drive a truck though.

But all that is beside the point. What I observed was; Hannah held her tongue the whole conversation. While she was participating in the general conversation, she never said a word on this subject. And Oh, I KNOW she wanted to.

When we where in the car on the way home, I commented on her self control and her knowledge/intuition to know she should probably stay out of the conversation. “that was hard, I’ll tell you”. I bet it was. And it was NOT prompted by me. I never said a word to her. She just knew it probably was not the best time, even though I ventured in a little bit!

That was notable. I was impressed. But what prompted me to comment here was something she said on the way to school this morning. I had asked her about how she was doing on her German program. She has Rosetta Stone German. She has been working with it regularly, but I had not seen her on it in the last two days. She said “It’s addictive! I’ve tried to train myself to walk away from addictive things on the computer”. Are you kidding me? she is 14. And my 14y.o. knows to try and use some self control?

She is a better person than I.

From the Archive

I just found this picture of the girls. It was around July of 2007. Melinda was really enjoying the fireworks from our driveway. The shrapnel was falling into the yard as we watched.. That is what is in her right hand. (its a long story, but our house is within 300 feet of where they launch them…) That is Dales arm and Foot to the right.

Hannah’s first: shooting

Hannah has been bugging me to take her to a range to shoot for a while now.  On a whim, I figured we would go and see what it would take to shoot at the range. I figured we would need a permit or some kind of authorization, and that we would have to come back another night with the needed paperwork. But it turns out you just have to sign a waiver. Simple as that.

So we rented a Ruger SR-22 rifle,  purchased a couple boxes of ammo, and away we went! It was a fun Tuesday night for a change. (Yes, Hannah had ear protection..)

Pictures from the misc. folder at Church.

These were out on a table at Church today.. I guess they were cleaning the archives, and were going to throw them away if no one wanted them, so I took a couple!
This one was from Rally Day last year. I helped make cotton candy and popcorn.

I just liked these images of people eating the cotton candy.

Here is an early picture of Rockwell at “Parents night out”, a program at church that Kathi and another mom created a few years ago. It lasted a couple years before they got tired of not getting any support.. 🙂

Im pretty sure this is a Sunday school picture a year or so later.

Another paper by Hannah.

Here is a good one. This was not for English, this was for Biology. The assignment was: “write two paragraphs about the relevance of biology to society.”
Hannah came to me initially and said.. “What the heck does she want here??” And I said.. “Hmm. Good question.. well, we can start by asking ourselves what is biology?” and she replied “Bio; life, ology; study of.” And after a few seconds of contemplating that, she said “OK. I’ve got it from here.”

I love how she reworded the title of the paper.

Yes, I know there are more mistakes than the one the teacher pointed out.. I will give her some slack because she is not an English teacher. 🙂

Interim reports are in.

And I went to see/meet Hannah’s teachers.
They all lover her. Only two teachers had a single negative thing to say, and that is that she reads too much in class. This is an ongoing problem since elementary school.

She is getting high A’s in all her classes.

Except gym.
She promised to fix that.

Things I noticed; She sits in the front of the class for most of her classes. She associates with many kid in the hallways.

I am a very lucky Dad.

I will let you know how Rockwell and Melinda’s interim reports went, they were tonight also.

Hannah’s Schedule

Here is Hannah’s Schedule. Turns out all of her classes are “honors” classes. (Except for gym and band). In the first semester of Fresheman year?

This is sort of interesting to me. Call me ignorant, but I really did not realize that what you did in middle school translated this significantly into high school. It goes to show that taking school seriously, as early as possible, really counts down the line.

It plays into a fear of mine. When I was younger, in HS, I did not participte in wrestling, because all the others on the team had started wrestling in middle school. Perhaps my fears where not as unfounded as I later thought? Still, that should not have stopped me. I should have tried out anyway. I guess I was too much of a perfectionist. I do not have that issue anymore.

Melinda, however, might have that perfectionist tendancy… hmm. I’ll have to keep an eye on that.

A peek at Hannah’s Homework.

So, I had to email Hannah’s homework to her teacher (we did not have a thumbdrive to use). Naturally, I wanted to read the story. I have to say, pretty darn creative. And I’m starting to think that creative is going to be a useful attribute in our world of the future. What do you think? (The formatting got removed.. there are paragraphs)

The Car We Had to Push from a Different Perspective Rubric
The World Was Coming to an End
By: Hannah Elser

The world was coming to an end. What didn’t people get about that? It was pretty clear to him, especially the way people were acting these days. Ridiculous, they are. So he was trying to warn his community that they should get ready, that the world was coming to an end. So he took the direct approach, he rode around in his big red Devil yelling out the window that the world was going to end. He didn’t have to. It’s not like he was going to be alive when the world ended, he was too old for that. It was just something he did. A hobby, almost.
The bright gray eyes stared at the poster in front of him . ‘Opening of King Lear’, it announced, ‘November 3-6’. He might go to that. He had gone to a concert before, hopping up on the stage halfway through the symphony, waving his hands wildly about, and ranting about how the world was going to end. It was all in the name of humor, of course. Honestly, the violin solo wasn’t bad, it was just kind of… well, boring.
So he stood there running a hand through his hair, smiled and decided that, yes, this would be a nice opportunity to spread the word that the world was ending, and to make them laugh. He had decided, quite awhile ago, that if people weren’t going to believe him, the least he could do was make them laugh. And he knew they didn’t believe him. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that there weren’t people whispering that he was insane behind his back, or in front of him for that matter. So he would make them laugh. The world deserved the little humor he gave to it before it died. If not the people on it, the world. ‘Because people are stupid creatures’, he thought,’ We create warfare and then go around saying that it’s for peace. We wear neckties. What kind of stupid race wears ropes in a knot around their neck? Neckties, honestly. The world is full of stupid people who abuse their children, shoot old ladies for no particular reason, get drunk when they’re sad, and so on. The world is full of stupid people.’ He wasn’t going to remedy that, he was just finding a temporary solution until the world ended.
The mans eyes crinkled as he smiled at his thoughts. He was driving to the theater. It was the fourth and he had gotten ticket from a friend who worked at the theater. The friend, Thomas, said that he didn’t even want to know what his friend was planning but he smiled and shook his head knowingly while he said it. He approved.
He handed the ticket to the young man behind the counter. Bill, if name tags were anything to go by, had a strange look of what appeared to be disgust on his face. Apparently he knew who he was, which wasn’t surprising. There weren’t many people in this town who didn’t know who he was. His reputation was not a good one.
He had chosen a seat on the balcony. There were more places to hide and it was darker, and it would take longer for them to get up here, drag him down the stairs, and kick him out. He had a slim body type made for running, and hide-and-seek had always been his favorite game as a child. He sat there for about fifteen minutes before the curtains rose and Kent, Gloucester, and Edmund entered the stage.
It was halfway through the play when he remembered why he was there in the first place. He was about to begin his bout of screaming, then hesitated. It wasn’t a bad play, in fact it was quite good. Don’t get him wrong, he had no qualms about interrupting it, he just wanted to see the end. Oh well, he could always ask Thomas later for another ticket, or, if he gets banned from the theater, ask for for the script. Everything was solved in that department so he began. He started shouting- shouting for all the people in the theater, for all the people of this world that it was going to end. The lightning sizzled and the thunder boomed, but the play was just background noise now. He had forgotten how much fun it was, being on the stage and making people laugh. It was exhilarating. But being a comedian had its ups and downs. Why he did had been wonderful, he had loved his job, but the pay… well, he didn’t love that.
They caught up to him pretty quick. He made a mental note to last longer next time. That was a new game he could play. Try-to-beat-the-record-for-not-getting-kicked-out-of-the-theater he would call it. He laughed at his own thoughts as they dragged him out. They already thought he was insane, what would a little laughing at nothing do to that? So he kept laughing as they dragged him to the exit. They threw him to the ground. Bill, if name tags were ever correct, looked down upon him, scoffed, and said,”Crazy old geezer. You’re insane!” He just leaned against the wall and laughed a little harder. The boy needed more laughter in his life. Huh, maybe he was insane. Oh well, it seemed insanity was fun. It sounded better then that human stupidity anyway. Let’s stay.

Arthur’s turkeys.

Arthur has about 30 turkeys.  I assume Hannah and I are going to an awesome turkey dinner at his house at thanksgiving.

May I introduce: Arthur’s Talking Turkeys.